Category: History
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The Commerce Comet After Dark: The Wild, Unfiltered Life of Mickey Mantle
By Bill Coleman By the time the stadium lights dimmed in the Bronx, another show was just getting started! The All-American Star Who Didn’t Fit the Mold On the field, Mickey Mantle was the embodiment of postwar baseball greatness with switch-hitting power, Oklahoma charm and the centerpiece of the New York Yankees dynasty. Off the field, he was something…
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The History of Baseball Video Games
BP Note: This is the second of our two-part post. Please access the first half post covering pinball machines linked here: The History of Baseball Pinball Machines. By Bill Coleman From Pixels to Pennants: The Evolution of Baseball Video Games Baseball, with its measured pace and statistical soul, has always seemed like a natural fit…
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The History of Baseball Pinball Machines
By Bill Coleman BP Note: This is a two-part post. The second half will cover baseball video game history, which we will release on Friday, May 15th. Silver Balls & Fastballs: The Lost Art of Baseball Pinball – Where the Arcade Meets the Ballpark There’s a certain magic in the sound of a pinball machine—the…
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Not so Fast Times on the Injured List: The Velocity Dilemma
Pitching injuries in MLB are up. Way up! We covered MLB pitching injuries from a couple of angles previously (here and here), but this article from a year ago shows the mounting evidence. Specifically, this chart from that same article clearly shows a steady increase of pitching injuries over the past twenty years. The article sums…
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Where have you gone, Jackie Jensen? A city no longer turned its lonely eyes to you…
By Bill Coleman The Reluctant Star of the Red Sox My mother grew up near Fenway Park in Boston. Back in the day, they would open the gates after the 7th inning stretch so kids could come in and watch the end of the games. So my mom would run over and sit in the…
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Less is More
We are all excited that a new baseball season has just begun. With that said, it will not be too long before some of us will be asking how much is enough? For comparison purposes let’s look at the current and recent seasons, as well as seasons from the past in terms of length. The…
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Wins and Innings
On October 31, 1973 Tom Seaver of the New York Mets became the first Cy Young winner to not win at least 20 games. Seaver only missed that mark by one win after recording a record of 19-10 for the 1973 season. How times have changed. There has not been a 20 game Cy Young…
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The Curious Case of Lou Proctor
In a remote and distant corner of baseball history is the story of Lou Proctor, which was originally documented in The Baseball Encyclopedia. In the case of the latter, it is the story of a publication that no longer exists and in the person of Lou Proctor it is the tale of a ball player…
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Cheer Up White Sox Fans
As most fans now know, the Chicago White Sox set the record for futility in 2024 with the most losses in a single season with 121. This mark “bested” the 1962 New York Mets, who previously held the record with 120 losses. Although this is a low point in White Sox history, they can in…
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Triple Crown Races Goes Down to the Wire!
By: Reed Weiser Stepping away a moment from our traditional examination of the baseball rules and the management of the game, it has been an exciting year in terms of individual achievements. During the course of the baseball season, I periodically scan over the League Leaders in what we used to consider traditional statistics as…
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Combined No-Hitters
For 90 years from 1876 through 1966, major league baseball only had one combined no-hitter meaning more than one pitcher was involved in the effort. Overall, there have been 20 combined no-hitters in major league history. Although a combined no-hitter was a rarity prior to 1970 (there were only two) it has become commonplace recently. …
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The State of the Game
Baseball was previously known as America’s Pastime, but sadly those days are long gone. Many considered the golden age of baseball from 1920 – 1960, while others believed the post war era from 1946 – 1969 as the games heyday. Whatever you think was the height of baseball, those days are clearly over when compared…